Digital Disruptions in Engineering and Manufacturing Industry

This paper holds that, as the ‘digital’ wave of ‘disruption’ has changed the global ‘engineering’ and ‘manufacturing’ landscape, radical impact is seen in the overall business scenario. There are opportunities to be grabbed as the old guard gives way to the new guard, cracks developed in the traditional channels paving ways to the smart players to make their footprint. Need is to evolve with the changed strategies to ride the wave in search of transformation and opportunities with it based on the backbone of a strong strategy backing the technologies to make this happen. There will be a need of trained manpower along the way, inquisitive minds, good mentors to meet the challenges. Collaborative partnerships, sharing of data, data lakes and bridges of connectivity, mobility, Internet of Things and Big Data Analytics will be the terms seen floating around. Agile methods will be used to farm this data with the cloud security and ethical behaviour as a social norm personifying a global citizen. Digital Design Houses, Digital Manufacturing, Digital Services and Digital Distributions are the newer pastures for the business houses in the near future. Robots and automation obeying the masters sitting in different continent driving the man-less factories, employees riding in their self-contained driverless automobiles would soon be a reality. Digital Twins--the continuing convergence of the real and the virtual worlds will be the main driver of innovation and change in all sectors of our economy. This article discusses the impact, challenges and opportunities of digitization and concludes with examples of recommended actions to meet the objectives.